Jaque Ramirez jokes that she is made out of flesh, bone and paintbrush. A circus artist and drag queen, she uses make-up as a tool to express herself in different ways. “There’s something very accepting about these arts of the circus, of the drag scene. They are very broad and embrace many different languages,” she says.

That inclusiveness is the motto of this course, which illustrates different types of artistic make-up for stage shows.

There are four video tutorials, in which Jaque shows the step by step of each technique. The first episode is about feminine eyes – those elongated ones, with stones, based in the circus tradition. The one second is dedicated to the drag queens’ look. Then, in the third, she talks about make-up for clowns, from the most classical to contemporary styles. Finally, she presents a look for male faces, inspired by commedia dell’arte (a popular theatre genre that emerged in Renaissance Europe) and its masks.

Jaque Ramirez has been a drag queen for 12 years. Her style mixes circus and theatrical languages with plastic and performing arts. Her skills as an acrobat and trapeze artist are often displayed in her performances and in the circus duo As Ramirez (The Ramirez). Currently, she is a PhD student in Linguistics at Unicamp (University of Campinas).